


Mind-Link

by Persephone_Van_Dyke



Series: Meeting Of The Ways [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Hypnotism, M/M, Mind Control, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-16
Updated: 2011-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Van_Dyke/pseuds/Persephone_Van_Dyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was an understanding about those hot sticky thoughts the strays on board occasionally had. She always tactfully damped them out, so he couldn't feel them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind-Link

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'Hypnosis/Mind Control' in [kink_bingo](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/)
> 
> Not my characters, not making any money from this

  
She would not really have called it "mind control". Even when she could have. She and the Doctor had a mind-link, and just for once, she chose to tease him a bit.

There was an understanding about those hot sticky thoughts the strays on board occasionally had. Her Doctor could usually feel the telepathic residues of his companions' emotions, even if they weren't present - like a drift of someone's perfume in a room they've left. She always tactfully damped them out, so he couldn't feel them, those thoughts that got so big and intense and repetitive and happy, and sometimes went nova in glowing, vivid explosions of joy. For some reason, they made the Doctor all fierce and embarrassed when he picked up on them.

She doesn't _listen in_. But she senses those thoughts, and is touched or cheered by them. She had compensated for her Doctor's wooliness about bunkbeds by making sure the Ponds' room never got too cold and they could always find important things in the bedside drawer, even if they'd lost them down the side of the mattress last time. Martha had got a nice fluffy dressing-gown and occasional, unexpected chocolate to console her for her firce, unhappy dreams about the oblivious Doctor.

This stray is different. Strayer than most, a wanderer, whom she remembers but hasn't seen in years. She doesn't think of him in words, but if she had to give him a name it would be Nice Hands, because he's got clever engineer's fingers that are always gentle and competent when he's helping the Doctor at the controls.

Not long after Demon's Run, while Pretty and Pond were gone, he'd turned up. She was fairly sure it was the Doctor's doing, because _she_ hadn't tracked him down deliberately.

There were a couple of bitter-tasting days when everything was angry and hurt and sorry and guilty all at once. She felt everything sad and painful that was in Nice Hands' memory, and treated him, moving his room round to a shape he liked, providing extra blankets, a hook on the door for his coat. It wasn't much, but he'd patted the wall and said something in that wordy way humans communicated. She knew what he'd said was sweet from the feel of his thoughts.

After a few days, her two inhabitants seemed to calm down. All she could taste was the awkward friendship of two males, with small politenesses and no hugging at all. And under the surface, matching thought on either side. Wanting, needing, and secrecy.

She feels these tensions often and doesn't usually worry about parsing them. Normally, people are tense about the Doctor, but he's completely oblivious. Now he's tense too, and more embarrassed than ever.

As far as she can tell, doing those interlocky things humans do, that make their thoughts all bright and random and happy, would make him feel better. And he isn't doing them, which seems silly. Specially when she knows very well that Nice Hands is good at those things, and interested in doing them with the Doctor.

So this morning, she felt hot and happy thoughts from the direction of Nice Hands' room. They were bright, brilliant, creative thoughts - shapeless, colourful, tasting of joy and affection and hunger - all the sadness in him tucked away somewhere safe. She could tell by the basic thoughts - the functionalities under the many layers of fantasy and distraction - that he was doing that clever thing with his hand - no, she realised, one hand _there_ and some fingers _there_.

Ooh, that _is_ clever.

She didn't damp them out. She just let the Doctor pick up on them while he tinkered about in the control room.

He got a flicker, just a taste, of the thoughts Jack was thinking, and sat up suddenly, with a mental noise equivalent to ' _Huh_?'

Fragments of fantasy, seen something like projected pictures and something like dreamscapes, lit and flickered.

'What's that?' the Doctor said out loud, interrupted by another brief fragment, an image which clarified and then shattered almost instantly, but not before he could recognise it. 'Hang on - that's me! Why is - ?'

She felt, like a taste half-rememberd, the Doctor's arousal swirl up and then fade down as his analytical mind overtook it. That thought must have been a nice one. Mouths were involved somewhere, also no clothes at all.

'What's happend to your telepathic dampers, old girl?' he muttered.

The Doctor paced, and the Tardis could feel his thoughts growing widespread, scattered and excited again. She amped the signal a fraction, fortuitiously just as Jack thought of something particularly hot and a flash of thoughts - _yeah there right there oh Doctor_ \- and images flared up again in the Doctor's mind. She could feel him trying to pull his thoughts back in to cool rational shapes, but he was having difficulty.

'Sexy! Stoppit!' he said, irritably. 'That's - that's private!'

He dragged his hands back through his hair, anxious, irritable, trying to ignore the ache of arousal he was experiencing. It wasn't the first time in this regeneration, but the Doctor is the master of self-distraction. Spending this long without what you would call a sex drive - and before that, being tied in to the restrictive cultural norms of Gallifrey - meant he seemed to have much more trouble dealing with these impulses than, for example, Nice Hands did.

'Why aren't you damping this out?' he demanded. 'It's private - I shouldn't be feeling this.' He stalked over to the console, fished underneath for the telepathic controls.

She gave him some soothing telepathic fussing, to calm him down and tell him it was all right. I know and you know, she broadcasted, that Nice Hands wouldn't mind a bit if you went and asked to join in. In fact, you'd make his century. And I know, Doctor, that you'd really like to, but for some reason you think you shouldn't. So here, I'm making it easy for you.

The telepathic translation of "Nice Hands" has more to it, a composite of, yes, nice hands, and blue eyes and soft dark hair and an impression of tough blue and grey clothes and a confident voice and a hint of the pheremones he smells of that the Doctor is so good at ignoring.

It was a usage designed to tempt and arouse. She felt it work, felt his mind flower in a swathe of bright, shiny images before he clamped them down again.

'Look, old girl, that's not - stop _doing_ that - that's not fair. I'm - I don't - '

The Tardis tried to explain for him, without words, that he was antsy and annoying lately, and she thought it had to with all the exciting things that some of his strays seemed to do. She backed up her point by boosting the signal a little, giving the Doctor a brief flash of physical sensation - a pleasant-urgent sensation at the root of his cock - and as she'd thought it would, it made his mind almost dizzy-tasting with matching excitement.

'Oh,' he said, half a gasp of reaction, half of realisation. 'Sexy, are you - tell me honestly - are you messing with me or is this you sending me where I need to be?'

She showed him a flicker of Jack's effervescent mind, filled with longing for him, creative and exciting and full of glowing ideas.

'Uh,' it was almost a moan, soft and thrilled. 'Oh, all _right_ \- I'll go and ask him.

She almost purred, pleased and happy, and gave him a mental nudge towards Jack's room. Smoothing his hair nervously, he left.

Not that she ever _listened in_ , but after that the thoughts she could feel, Nice Hands' and the Doctor's, got bright and shiny and happy, entangling and expanding and glowing, and then she felt them go nova.

END


End file.
